Cured (5 page)

“I … I couldn't tell you.” Lissa looks between Bowen and Fo, and tears fill her eyes. “I knew if I did, you two would try and find her, and I'd barely gotten you back. I couldn't risk losing you again. Not when our brother was on the brink of death.”

With those words, the last person in the group limp-walks out from behind Fo. He is wearing faded jeans and a gray hooded sweatshirt—hood pulled over his head—and the biggest backpack I've ever seen. He's tall—would be taller than Bowen if he weren't slouching. Despite his long-sleeved hoodie, I can tell that lean muscles cord his forearms and biceps and bulge in his shoulders, making the hoodie appear too small. He's not carrying any weapons, at least none that I can see. But with a body like that, he
is
a weapon.

My gaze stops on his hands and I gawk—they are covered with fine, pale scars, like he's wearing delicate lace gloves. My eyes follow his right hand as it slowly moves up to his hood. He has the mark—a black ten-legged tattoo entwined with
thread-fine scars. He pulls the hood from his head and I gasp. His head is shaved, with a hint of pale stubble growing from a scarred and bruised scalp. One of the scars on his scalp is surrounded by suture scars, making it look like a long, pink caterpillar is crawling over his skin. The sun-tanned skin on his face is interlaced with intricate white lines, a shroud of white, lacelike scars. I look into his haunted eyes and take an involuntary step back. One eye is a deep, warm brown, the other a pale, colorless gray that's looking in the wrong direction.

“Jack, you remember my brother, Jonah, right?” Fiona asks, voice little more than a whisper.

I nod, not taking my eyes from him. He lifts his right hand and pulls the hood back over his head. I keep staring at his shadowed face, searching for the boy he used to be, but can't see any of the old Jonah. If Fo hadn't told me who he was, I would not have known.

“What happened to you?” I whisper. He looks past me, as if he didn't hear what I said.

“We need to go,” Bowen says. “There'll be plenty of time to get reacquainted later.”

Lissa hugs Bowen, then Jonah, and then Fiona. When she's done hugging them, she turns to me, wraps her arms around me, and squeezes. “So good to see you, Jack,” she whispers. When she lets me go, tears are streaming down her cheeks. “Take care of my sister, Bowen.”

“You know I will.” Bowen turns to the two militiamen. “Hey, Rory. I need you to escort Lissa and Dr. Grayson back to the gate.”

“Sure thing, Bowen.”

“I love you guys,” Lissa says. She dabs at her eyes. The doctor puts his arm around her shoulders and they walk to Rory.

Bowen turns to me. “First of all, we need to find my contact on the outskirts of the city before the sun goes down. We need to hurry.”

“What contact?” I ask, annoyed that Bowen's already put himself in charge. “I've never heard anything about a contact on the outskirts of the city.”

One of his eyebrows lifts, and he looks me up and down. “How many times've you been out of your house in the past four years?”

“I leave my house every day,” I snap, thrusting my chin forward.

“And how many times've you left your yard?”

I frown and bite the inside of my cheek—a habit my dad has tried to break me of for years. Bowen nods and says, “That's what I thought. Now, let's get going.”

We turn north, but instead of walking, Bowen whips his rifle onto his shoulder. On the road in front of us stands the vagabond, looking hungrier than ever. “Don't shoot!” I blurt, jumping in front of Bowen. “He's harmless.”

“Do you need something, old man?” Bowen calmly asks, pushing me aside.

I cringe, waiting for the vagabond to ask for food—the one thing you can never have enough of in this world. The one thing I can no longer spare. “Do you have information about the cure?” he asks with a deep, rich voice. I stare at his mouth, wondering if I'm imagining things. His teeth look pearly white, the kind of teeth my dad loves—straight, clean, beautiful. They've never
looked like that before. Usually they're brownish-green and so fuzzy they almost look plastic.

The vagabond's gaze travels from Bowen to Fiona and stops on Jonah, moving down Jonah's body and freezing on his right hand. He stands a little taller and his eyebrows—so covered with mud and dry grass that I can't even tell what color they are—crawl halfway up his forehead. “It's true. There's a cure,” he whispers.

“Yes,” Fo says, lifting her hand to show him her tattoo. “My brother and I are living proof.”

The man sighs, his breath rustling his crusty beard, and then he laughs, white teeth gleaming, and looks up to the sky. Without another word he turns and wanders down a road that leads east.

A prickling feeling crawls up my spine and makes my buzzed hair stand on end. “That was weird,” I say, my voice unnatural in the silent world. Silently, we start walking north down the vacant street, with the wall at our left blocking the sun and the view of downtown Denver. Jonah shuffles beside me, and whatever is in his bulging backpack sloshes with every step. When he puts weight on his right foot, his left foot folds sideways and drags. I wonder if he'll be able to run when we have something to run from.

A breeze blows against my face, whistling through the broken windows of abandoned buildings and cars, and I shiver despite the warm September afternoon. I take a look over my shoulder, peering back the way we've come, thinking the vagabond might be following us. A tumbleweed blows down the street, but nothing else moves.

There are two hundred mountain peaks visible from Denver. By the time we reach the northern outskirts of the city, the sun is a little more than a hand span over one of them, and the air seems heavy with eyes and ears. Bowen senses it too, if the way he keeps looking over his shoulder is any indication. I peer toward the city for the tenth time, almost expecting to see the vagabond creeping along behind us, but don't see anyone.

We are walking in the middle of Interstate 25. It has been reduced to a crumbling eight-lane highway with nearly invisible street lines interrupted by the occasional abandoned vehicle. It is so wide, I feel like an ant crawling along a sidewalk. Everything is silent. Too silent. Too abandoned.

“Don't worry. The rumor inside the wall is, the raiders are gone,” Fo says.

Dad says rumors are typically wrong. He worked on a man's teeth about a week ago, a man who tried very hard to hide the scars on his palms—northern raider markings. If the raiders were really gone, they wouldn't still be coming to my dad for dental work.

“Do you think it is actually true that the raiders are gone?” Fo asks, as if she's jumped into my head and plucked out my worst fear. Jonah, on my left, doesn't take his gaze from his shuffling feet—where it's been all afternoon.

“Of course they're not gone,” Bowen says, his voice low. “They've just been lying low.”

“Do you think they have watchers during the day?” Fo asks. I nod and rest my hand on my gun.

“They're always watching.” Bowen stops walking and spins in a circle, eyes darting all around.

“What are you looking for?” Fo asks, her voice like quiet music.

“I'll know it when I see it.” He gives her a hint of a smile, and then reaches out and cups her cheek in his hand. She looks right into his eyes and doesn't move, as if they're the only two people in the world. Embarrassed to be witnessing something so intimate, I avert my gaze. “Don't worry,” Bowen says after a minute, his voice filled with emotion. “I'll take care of you and so will Jonah. Right, Jonah?”

Jonah grunts without looking away from his feet. I fight the urge to clear my throat and blurt,
Well, who is going to take care of me?
Because I already know the answer. Me. I'm the only one who will take care of me out here.

We walk for a few more minutes, past broken-down and abandoned cars; past pale bones stark against the faded black-top; past sun-bleached trash, empty water bottles, and faded beer cans that have been blown against the cement median. My gaze wanders over the world, soaks in the absolute bleakness of everything, and I realize how impossible it is that we might actually find my brother. There is nothing out here.

“There!” I jump at Bowen's voice. He is pointing to the nearest off-ramp, a ramp that leads to neighborhoods of oversize houses. We exit the highway. I follow a step behind Bowen and Fo, with Jonah at my side, toward a wooden building made to resemble a log cabin, with grimy windows—where the windows aren't shattered. It's a diner, and the weather-beaten sign that hangs above it says, “The Other End of Town.”

“You guys hungry?” Bowen asks, gaze glued to the diner.

“Uh, Bowen, I don't think there's going to be any food in there,” I say, feeling my stomach quiver at the mere thought of salty, greasy diner food. In this world, you need guns to survive more than you need food. Because if you can't protect your food, you starve. And if you starve, you die. Common sense. “Guns before food,” I whisper, one of my mother's many needlepoint phrases.

“We're not
really
looking for food. It was a joke, Flapjack,” Bowen says.

Flapjack
. I roll my eyes at the name. In fifth grade I won the school's annual pancake-eating contest and earned the hated nickname. It didn't help that I was soft and round like a pancake and the shortest kid who entered the contest. The only person
who came close to eating as many pancakes as me was Bowen. He ate eighteen. I ate twenty-one.

“Why don't you get your gun ready just in case,” Bowen adds.

I stand tall and pull the gun from the holster on my belt. My heart rate accelerates as I lift the Glock and swing it from side to side.

A tan, square hand covers mine and calmly pushes the gun down. “Jack, calm down.” Bowen's voice is gentle. “I don't actually think you'll need it. It's just a precaution. Have it ready just in case.”

I take my trembling finger from the trigger and try to catch my breath.

“You're a jumpy thing, aren't you,” he says, one eyebrow raised.

I glare. “Can you blame me?”

“No.” He sighs. “You'd better be ready to fight too, Jonah,” Bowen adds.

Jonah grasps the shoulder straps of his massive backpack and stares at the pink-and-orange-hued clouds glowing above the mountains, as if he's oblivious to our conversation. But then he takes a step closer to Fo, and she smiles at him.

“So, what's in your bag anyway?” I ask him. He looks at me and his bad eye reflects the fire-colored sky.

“Water,” Fiona blurts.

“Yeah. Lots of water,” Bowen adds.

“Didn't you bring a purifier? There are so many lakes and streams around here that water should be easy to find.”

“Of course we did. It's just another precaution.” Bowen rolls his shoulders as if
he
's the one burdened by Jonah's pack. “Let's go.”

We walk to the diner and stop in front of the entrance. The dusty ground is disturbed here, fanned with the hint of footprints. I crouch down and stare at the ground, scrutinizing the markings, trying to discern whether they're going into the diner or coming out.

“Bowen,” I whisper. “These prints are fresh. We need to leave while we have the—”

My head jerks up at the sound of a deep chuckle. A lone man stands framed in an empty diner window. I have my gun aimed at him so fast that Fo jumps. The man's foot whips out and kicks my gun. It clatters against cement, sliding away from me in a swirl of dust. I dive for it but my hand comes down on a worn, brown cowboy boot.

“Beat you to your own gun, Freckles,” a deep voice says. I slowly look up and my gaze travels over a dusty pair of faded blue jeans, an empty gun belt, two beefy hands each gripping a gun, a button-down shirt; up to a weathered face; stopping on a pair of hard eyes shaded by a cowboy hat. “Kids 'n' guns aren't a good combination. Sort of like antifreeze and Kool-Aid. They're all kinda sweet but deadly when mixed.”

I swallow and scurry backward, crashing into the solid mass of Jonah's legs. He loops his hands under my armpits and lifts me to my feet.

“You all mind showing me your hands? I can't have you coming in here pointing firearms at me.” Without a word, the four of us lift our empty hands, and I fight the urge to look at the rifles looped over Fo and Bowen's shoulders.

“Much obliged.” The cowboy holsters one of his guns and
picks mine up off the ground. He turns it from side to side, blows the dust from it, and then points it between my eyes. “That's a nice piece, Freckles. If your aim is good, you could kill nineteen men without reloading.” I shudder at the thought. “Now, what do you kids want?”

“We want a hot bath and a nice meal,” Bowen says. I turn and glower at him. Seriously? That's how he's going to answer this towering pillar of cowboy strength, who is aiming my own gun at me? I look back at the cowboy just as deep creases form in his weathered cheeks. It takes me a moment to realize he's smiling.

“You've come to the right place,” he says, holstering his other gun. With the hand holding my gun, he waves us inside. I follow Fo and Bowen through the window frame and wonder if I am really, truly going to get a hot bath and a meal. With Jonah behind me, the cowboy leads us to a faded red vinyl booth. He sits. Bowen gives Fo and me a warning look before sliding onto the opposite bench.

The cowboy's eyes move over Fo, Bowen, and Jonah, studying them one by one. When he looks at me, staring deep into my eyes—so deep I worry he can see the secrets hidden there—he frowns. “So.” His gaze goes back to Bowen. “What exactly are you aiming to buy?” He taps my gun against the peeling paint of the table.

“We need to get to Wyoming. Word in the city is you know the right path to take.”